


Postcards to Haven: Open Water Stargazing

by Kedreeva



Series: Postcards to Haven [1]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Daudrey, F/M, Multi, Postcards to Haven, Stargazing, Threegulls, Vacations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 05:43:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5615932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out in the deep blue, Audrey and Duke take a quiet moment to feel insignificant together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postcards to Haven: Open Water Stargazing

            Between destinations, they end up spending a night in the deep ocean- the kind of deep in which it is impossible to drop anchor. The waves here are different; they do not lap at the sides of the boat like they do in in the shallows near coasts. Here the water swells soft and easy, the breathing rhythm of the entire ocean as it sleeps under a blanket of darkness.

            Duke is up long past bedtime, fingers resting lightly around the controls of his boat, feeling the way she adjusts to the ocean she rides. When he was on his own, sometimes he would come out to these waters and let the _Rouge_ go like this. He would stand here, in the cabin by himself, and listen to the love song being sung by the water against her hull, feel the shift of her rudder and the pitch of her deck as she moved with the ocean that was his home away from home.

            Motion on the deck catches his eye, and he turns his attention to where Audrey has emerged from below deck. He watches her pad to the center of the open deck space, watches her stand there for a moment just staring up into the sky, and then she kneels, sprawls over onto her side and rolls onto her back.

            He smiles, hands slipping off the controls.

            She doesn’t react when he joins her, doesn’t even look over when he stretches out beside her on the floor. He puts his hands behind his head, eyes tracking up to the myriad stars glittering in the sky. Sometimes he wonders which is really the reflection of the other- the sky or the sea.

            “How many do you think there are?” Audrey murmurs after a while, rousing Duke from a light doze.

            “Infinity,” he says, dragging his eyes open to look at the stars again. “They say the universe is always expanding.”

            “Into what?” Audrey asks, soft.

            Duke’s not sure what to say, isn’t sure there is a good answer. “I guess… whatever is beyond the limit of existence.”

            Audrey hums a noise of acknowledgement, and they lapse into silence. Duke tracks over the constellations he recognizes, naming them in his head, reminding himself that there are millions of miles between them all. He tries to think about what is beyond them, beyond their solar system, beyond their galaxy, beyond their universe, but the human brain is not made to comprehend such large concepts, and he finds himself staring into the blankness of his mind instead.

            “It’s so _big_ ,” Audrey whispers, sounding considerably more sleepy now.

            “It’s the biggest thing there is,” Duke agrees, because it is, and he’s not sure what he means by it, but it seems important.

            “Bigger than us,” Audrey says, finally shifting to look over at him. He tips his head to see her, sees the starlight glimmering on tears. His heart twists up and he reaches out to her, rolls so he can pull her close to him, feels her shaking in his arms.

            She wraps her arms around him as he strokes her hair, murmurs soothing, nonsense sounds against her temple until she’s gone lax and warm against him, until her grip slackens. She doesn’t move away, keeps her forehead pressed against his collarbone.

            “Sorry,” she mumbles into his shirt.

            “It’s okay,” he tells her. He doesn’t ask her what happened, doesn’t press to know what she is thinking; he knows.

            He’s been there.

            He’s laid exactly where they are lying now, stared up at these same stars, at unfamiliar stars south of the equator, just to see how insignificant they could make him feel. Under the light of an infinite cosmos, surrounded by an ocean too big to comprehend, it is easy to remember that he is just a tiny fleck of life, a single cell in the organism of existence. Nothing they did could ever really matter.

            He knew exactly how daunting, terrifying even, it could be to encounter such a vast concept unprepared. He was unashamed to admit he had cried the first time, too.

            Now, it is a comfort to him. There is a certain amount of safety in being insignificant, something that they are all finding out together on their journey around the world. There is safety in not being the integral cogs in the machine of fate.

            There is _relief_ in being able to be _just Duke_ and _just Audrey_ and _just Nathan_.

            And he knows those are the thoughts that have found her here, knows that it is the relief of being free of everything that had her shaking only a moment ago, the high that comes with knowing _it’s over_.

            She sniffles, pulling away from him just a little bit, just enough to see him. “Can we stay out here, just a little longer?”

            “Can stay as long as you like,” he tells her gently, relishing the truth of the statement. They no longer have anywhere to be, anywhere to go, anything that requires their presence.

            Then he drops a soft kiss to her temple and shifts his position so that they can both lie on their backs again. She settles with her head on his arm and one hand on his chest, fingers rising and falling with each breath he takes. They stay that way, pressed comfortingly into each others space, until the beat of their hearts and the roll of the ocean has lulled them into peaceful sleep.


End file.
